Quick update:
on the machine with the specs outlined in previous posts (CF-card on ide adapter) I've added "pmedia=ataflash pupmode=13" to the kernel line in menu.lst as well. Dunno if I can fake a full install on this machine given although I used PUI-1 to do a "full", it kinda looks like a frugal to me as it wouldn't boot without grldr present (Grub4dos?).
Was getting some strange errors during shutdown pup_save updates-"[+1] stopped (SIGSTOPPED)" before and after the additional parameters above. Rebooting with immediate shutdown and reboot with the automatic fsck seemed to resolve this problem, though I note I always had loads of room in my pup_save (1GB, never >75% full with addition of multiple pets). Might be just the way I was holding my face during shutdowns...
(RAMtest checks out OK - I've noted that perhaps it is more likely to occur on this machine after installing something like JRE. Still digging...)
Because I have a WinFast GEForce2 MX/PCI/3DNOW videocard with 64mb RAM, I installed your NVIDIA-96.43.07-k2.6.25.16.pet (assuming it was related to gray's pet for cards including GEForce2) and the kids are rapt/rapped/wrapped with your StandaloneFlash11+browserlibs with loads of SWF games bookmarked to their file locations (pre-downloaded: no network for this machine), and are working their way through all the games I could find on your repository (Biniax doesn't have a menu entry, by the way. I link it and tk/tcl games through the menu system in radky's "My Applications" dialogue). For this 256MB RAM system, Beret (not in your repository) and OpenSonic are a bit of a struggle to run, naturally, and JNKPlat, King Arthur's Gold not at all. I do have DOSbox + GUI installed, so will be having fun with that in due course...
Strangely, it won't permit me to do anything other than 16bpp even though I've tried to get it manually and via the driver to use 24bpp. It's an LGTV working happily at 1024x768. I need to do more research there...
GOT THE JOYSTICK WORKING Thanks very much for your help in that regard, wound up using tempestuous' suggestion in this thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=310338#310338 and your calibration pet works like a dream! Now to get some flight simulators in...
I still have a 'ghosting' issue with USB drives removed after shutdown, showing up on the ROX desktop. Just the cog with the drive's label displayed.
Don't know the first thing about dropbox, technosaurus - but I see that your pet could be a real game-changer, thanks!
Cheers _________________Toowoomba Linux Community
http://groups.google.com/group/toowoombalinux

I'm posting this from within Akita, and I must say, there are some things here which impress me greatly. (There are also a few bummers.) I'll try to be real thorough, in the interests of providing as much useful info as possible.

My testing system is a NeoWare CA19 thin client, modified by the addition of extra RAM (512mb instead of 256) and a small hard drive (4gb microdrive in CF->44pinIDE adapter). I also put in an extra pair of USB ports, replacing a parallel port (DB25F for you techies, or LPT1 if you're old fashioned), the sort that time has long since rendered largely unnecessary. According to HardInfo, the system temperature is 38deg Celsius (~100deg F). I believe that this is the CPU temperature, but I'm honestly not sure. It's probably worth noting that the system is operating caseless right now, sitting horizontally on my computer desk.

The system is fanless, and right now, noiseless. It has a 400MHz VIA Eden CPU ("Esther" core) in addition to the specs listed above. The power supply is rather unusual for a standard PC, but I've seen this done on other thin clients as well -- it's actually a 12V output industrial "open frame" (meaning "not inside a metal box") power supply, as opposed to the more common styles of computer power supplies. It does not have a power saving mode, or even an off mode -- the supply is always on, and the system simply decides how much power it is going to pull. I'm told that the average consumption when the system is "off" is about 7W, and the supply maxes out at around 25W.

Note that I'm using a fullsize keyboard for once... I'm far more used to the smaller keyboard of my netbook, so if ya'll see a typo that I missed, that's where it came from

For now, I'm running Akita from a closed-session CD-R; it's in an "eBay special" slimline/laptop style external CD drive -- got the drive from a friend, and the kit to make it external from eBay. Good stuff since it's been working for a couple months now.

I had previously tried sc0ttman's last endeavor, Puplite 5, on this system. (I recall two versions being released, and offhand I do not recall which version I downloaded and eventually used here -- I have a rather special habit of downloading a Puplet once and then months later burning it to a CD.) Puplite 5 was very fast and responsive, about like my netbook (ASUS 1000HAB, completely stock) running *gaspcoughsputter* WinXP. I was quite impressed at the time with that Puplet. The only two things I didn't like were that it insisted on successfully booting only in "safe mode" (I suspect that there was an issue with ACPI, but I can't prove it)_and that I could not edit the boot string on the CD's menu (I have since been told how to do this).

Akita booted from the "...in RAM only" mode just fine (very nice!) but the boot seemed to be slower, which concerns me (I timed Puplite 5's boot at 4min 9sec, but I did not time Akita's boot yet). This is not a major issue, by any means (I don't care much about boot times) but it does tell an important story -- the longer an OS takes to boot, probably the more patient the user will have to be when using it.

Sadly, this rule was not violated. Akita is indeed slower than Puplite 5 on this system. Right as I type this, I get the following output from "free":

It's worth noting that swap shows up as zero in all cases because I'm not using any (nor do I have any to use). Puplite 5 was significantly more responsive, in general, than Akita is, even though both loaded entirely into RAM on boot.

I did not test Internet connectivity on Puplite 5, so I'm not sure if I would have had more trouble or less trouble in trying to connect. It seems that my preferred wireless card (a Rosewill brand RNX-150UBE with Realtek 8188/8192 chipset) takes a driver that does not exist for Puppy 4. I really didn't feel like finding out if ndiswrapper works, so I switched to a previously-used-under-Puppy-without-trouble Rosewill RNX-EasyN1, which has a Ralink 3070 chipset (supposed to work with the rt2870 driver). I had to use my netbook to find a working driver (made by a fellow on the forum named "Patriot"); I'm using it now. I would have tried one of my two Netgear WG111v3 adapters, but I've never had either of those work without some serious issue or another cropping up -- usually they are too slow with the builtin Puppy driver to even connect to a network successfully! (When they work, they overheat, so you can't win.)

Another minus. This one is really a matter of personal preference -- I am one of those seemingly few folks that actually believes in "too much variety". I don't need six terminals, I only need one that works. I don't need Geany AND Bluefish -- pick one, please, since they both do basically the same thing. But I *really* don't like having to wade through an extra layer of menus to find what I want. That, for me, is a big misfeature: if you have to have a menu of menus, you've stuffed too much in there by far! The lesson in this case is: you can't please everybody. Please yourself first, and whoever tags along liking that counts as a nice bonus. I can, however, safely say that I like the various control and setup panels; they are useful, since they are designed to organize a lot of things into one place, in an orderly fashion to boot. Lots of menus are a pain in the patoot, but it's easier to click on lots of buttons in lots of panels for some reason. (I don't get that either.)

As an artist (I'm a part time nerd and a part time artist), I will say that I don't like how few wallpapers are included. That said, I can't really hold that against anyone because (a) the stock Puppy wallpapers in most Puplets are boring to me to begin with and (b) I'm probably the only one on the entire forum who thinks that, because I rarely see more than an extra one or two in there. Here, there are three custom wallpapers (and the stock ones have been removed) but none of them really appeal to me. Again, a personal issue.

One other thing that I did not test in Puplite was the sound configuration. I do seem to recall that it asked me about which device to use (unless I'm getting confused) but I didn't have it connected to anything, so Puplite was mute. However, Akita did recognize and find a driver for my sound hardware automatically: I was treated to the customary double bark upon reaching the desktop.

My only other gripe (read: nitpick) so far is the lack of good alternative browsers in the browser-installer. I like QtWeb, Arora, and other lightweight browsers over Firefox and Opera and such. I *really* don't like SeaMonkey, mostly because it looks a lot like my mother's favorite (and rather antedeluvian) email client, Netscape 4.07 (copyright 1999)! I refuse to use Dillo until Flash support finds its way in... if I can't browse YouTube with it, it's not good enough for me. Honestly? I'm not sure if it's fair to dock sc0ttman for that, because I don't know if he made it or how easy it would be to improve/change/whatever. That said, I would have preferred a simple "pick one: dillo, firefox, seamonkey, qtweb" script that had a built-in *.pet fetcher.

Overall: I really like Akita, I seem to be able to use it well; what I don't like is outlined above. My biggest "like" is that it boots normally (for a Puplet) and in a reasonable length of time. My biggest gripe is still the double-layer main menu.

This concludes my review for now. As an aside: sc0ttman, have you looked at / tried Oroborus? There's a *.pet of it on this forum by musher0 that looks like it works quite well (it's not the one on the first page). He (musher0) tells me that it's the least RAM-hogging WM he's used (better than WMX and Fluxbox)... or at least, that's what I understood from what he told me (misunderstandings have been known to happen with me).

If I can be of further help, testing things out and all that good stuff, let me know._________________

Small update: flash does NOT work on my system. Tried to install a couple different versions, and none of them work. Tried in Firefox... didn't work (crashed instantly). Looks like QtWeb may not be in the mood to load plugins for some reason, so will post about that in the relevant thread elsewhere._________________

Thanks techno, most of the good stuff was done by others on this forum! I'll post the i18n'd download_progress script soon... I made a few changes, so that it could be integrated successfully into browser-installer and petget/pkg_chooser.. It's all working nicely, but no doubt my code additions in download_progess are a bit of a mess!
__________________________

Puppyt,

Glad your Flash working... Miniclip.com has a load more Flash games, and it amuses most of the kids where I work... Also shockwave and unity player games, which won't work at all on Linux That is VERY sad to me, some great shockwave games out there!!

No idea how PUI2-akita performs, you're the 1st to use it, ever.. Jemimah made it, I just added a few akita patches, probably missed more though! Also about grub vs extlinux etc - I would love to be of help but followed shinobars work in that area like a sheep

Am I right in thinking you got OpenGL working OK? I love nvidia cards on Linux

You might also be interested in running some emulated games for your kids - using Snes9x-gtk or ZSNES, to play classic SNES games (Donkey Kong Country, Mario World, F-Zero, etc).. Most of the packages are at http://ppm.scottjarvis.com, in the emulation section...

You can get roms from "romworld" (google it...)...

Glad you got the joystick working... So in short, what do I have to do?? As far as I understand it, there is no simple solution - the hardware driver must load first, only then you know what to add next... Following the info here (http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=310338#310338) ... could I use joystick-daemon try to detect (grep /etc/modprobe.conf) "alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371" and if present then add "options snd-ens1371 joystick_port=1".. And likewise for the other driver listed...

Boot times *should* be very similar, but Akita's even quicker to boot than Puplite on my PC.. Not sure why yours would boot slower.. Maybe it does for others, too, not sure... Akita does have more stuff enabled by default than Puplite did - I suggest using the 'Startups' tool to disable hotplugging (pup_event_frontend_d and udev, specifically).. And disable anything else you don't want.. You could try openbox from the PPM as well - some feel it is 'snappier' than JWM...

Quote:

I had to use my netbook to find a working driver (made by a fellow on the forum named "Patriot"); I'm using it now.

Where is that driver? Can you link to it or uplaod it somewhere, if need be?? I can add it to the zdrv by default - I already tied to add as many as possible - mostly from Patriots "Extra Drivers" thread...

About excessive menu items and subdirs... that's really easy to 'fix', without affecting the system too much.. Simply move all the .desktop files that you DO NOT want listed on your menu to ~/my-applications or anywhere else convenient.. Also edit /usr/sbin/fixmenus - change line 15 to read "SUBMENU=1".. Then when you next refresh your menu, the apps you moved will be gone, and so will submenus... Easy!

And don't forget, the JWM setup of Akita includes a 2nd, minimal 'Apps' menu - which by default contains only the essentials, but favourite programs can be added very easily.. Kind of doing it the other way around to above, but using in-built methods ...

About the 'lack' of browsers - I think Akita has more choice, easier to choose than any other Pup... Netsurf and QtWeb are also in PPM, not yet in browser-installer... No other puppy offers Firepup or Firedog, etc, alongside FF, opera, elinks, lynx, midori, etc... Admittedly they are not all the latest - and given that the framebuffer is enabled by default, I should definitely have links-g listed as well - so CLI/terminal users have an image enabled browser....

About Flash not working in QTweb.. Not tried it yet, but be a QtWeb issue, though... Midori is the smallest/lightest available that supports Flash (that I tested and definitely worked OK)... Firedog and Firefox-7.0.1-akita include the best YouTube video downloader available, as standard. Both are in the Browser Installer.

Wallpapers are not my concern at the moment.. I'm using whatever..

And no, never seen Oberus... I will add it to PPM, if I get it working... And I will do the same foe e16 or e17 or elightenment or whatever it is - but I can't find a working one for pup4... Anyone know of one??_________________Akita Linux, VLC-GTK, Pup Search, Pup File Search

I have made Russian translation. Although I believe that with gettext it could be done simpler. But you are the boss.

But you are the man! Thanks very much once again!
I know you love gettext, and do GREAT work with it,
but so many users feel too intimidated to use it..

Just in case anyone cares, the reason I like to avoid gettext:

- no gettext required (obviously)
- (most) users contribute fewer translations when gettext is required
- no extra tools required when not using gettext (no poeditor, etc)
- when using gettext, if changing base (often the 'en') translation, it breaks others
- locale must be changed to test, cannot simply run `LANG=de myscript`
- gettext needs files scattered at a number of different directories
- gettext simply needs more files, meaning more precious ram/disk space
- technos method is simplest, translations can be in-built, or wherever, its most lightweight (for me)...

However, saying all that:

- I will have a much nicer, even better .mo editor, in the next iso
- click on a .mo, if real, then mo->po->text editor...
- edit as required, then ->po->mo, replace old one..

Basically, regardless of whether a .mo file is a real 'machine object' file,
or simply plain text, clicking on it will load it up in a text editor,
and saving the changes made in the text editor will update the .mo translation _________________Akita Linux, VLC-GTK, Pup Search, Pup File SearchLast edited by sc0ttman on Wed 25 Jan 2012, 12:21; edited 1 time in total

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